Our Verdict

The La Sportiva TC Pro comes close to living up to the rock star, climb-anything-anywhere hype surrounding it. It features phenomenal edging, a flat toe, ankle protection for cracks, decent smearing ability, and an ultra supportive, semi-stiff sole that will keep your feet feeling strong pitch after pitch. This makes this shoe a top contender for the ultimate, single-quiver shoe title. As with any jack-of-all-trades, the TC Pro falls behind many specialized shoes in their respective terrains. It doesn't excel in the steep and burly world of high-end sport or bouldering.

For either, you'd be better off choosing the La Sportiva Genius or the Tenaya Tarifa. It also doesn't feel as versatile as the La Sportiva Skwama on a range of rock types. Instead, the TC Pro is an all-around, solid B student, with a peculiar savant-like genius for one subject. The brainchild of Tommy Caldwell is in a class of its own on high-end granite trad climbs. Only in the thinnest of cracks is this shoe less than perfect. If your hands can handle it, for the most part, these shoes can too. The semi-stiff sole stands in cracks all day without mangling your toes and will keep your feet from getting tired long after you've forgotten what lap you're on.

Our Analysis and Hands-on Test Results

Review by:
Matt Bento

Last Updated:
Thursday
August 17, 2017

Share:

Performance Comparison

Dave in the TC Pro on Cathedral Peak, Toulomne, YNP, CA.

Edging

The XS Edge rubber La Sportiva developed for the TC Pro was, as the name implies, designed for edging. It works phenomenally. The pointed toe stands on extremely microscopic features with ease, and both the inside and outside edges feel precise enough for hard face climbing. La Sportiva used their P3 technology to complete the edging package. After wearing this shoe for long enough, it's easy to be lured into believing they can truly do it all. Only when contrasted to specialized shoes like the La Sportiva Genius or the Miura VS is this model put into perspective. They are amazing edging shoes for being almost entirely flat, but they still fall beneath the upper echelon of edging shoes.

Crack Climbing

Fish do well in water, and the TC Pro does well in cracks for the same reason: they are meant to be there. The virtually flat toe fits perfectly in cracks, allowing you to crank and jam in all directions with impunity. The forefoot is surprisingly stiff for how sensitive the shoe feels and holds shape no matter how hard you try to mangle your foot in the wide stuff. Your hands will give in to the cracks long before this shoe does. The toe box has a high volume and doesn't do as well in thin cracks. For charging up cracks sized thin hands to fingers, we recommend the La Sportiva Skwama or the La Sportiva Katana Lace

Pockets

Just looking at the shape tells you it does well in pockets at some angle. However, the steeper you get, the less it performs. The flat toe, so amazing on edges and in cracks, will inspire ballerina like maneuvers to keep your toe in overhanging pockets, and you're still likely to fall out. For pocket climbing, we recommend the Tenaya Tarifa, with its pointy toes and excellent edging abilities. The La Sportiva Miura provided more than a little inspiration for the design of the TC Pro and had a down-turned enough toe to hang in an overhanging world where the TC Pro can't. Try the Miura, or the La Sportiva Katana Lace if you are a crack climber that wants to hook steep pockets too.

Comfort

After enough pitches, any shoe can make you miserable. How long that takes is the measure of how comfortable a shoe is. It doesn't baby your foot like some flat shoes. The toe is still aggressively pointed, and at one size down your toes will be slightly curled over. This shoe is very comfortable, but it isn't the most comfortable shoe ever made. Still, on pitch 23 it manages to feel very much like it did on pitch one.

The sole offers tons of support that helps stave off fatigue, and the shoe protects your foot amazingly in cracks. Both of these aspects of its performance are more important than its comfort out of the box. Only the Five Ten Quantum and a very well worn-in La Sportiva Katana Lace rival the all-day comfort and climbing ability of the TC Pro.

The down turn of the Katana Lace VS. the flatter fit of the TC Pro.

Best Applications

The TC Pro is a true all-arounder, sport climbing and bouldering surprisingly well. But, even Tommy Caldwell swaps them out for a pair Solutions or the venerable Miura when taking on hard sport routes. They indeed excel at all things trad, and will help keep you psyched on the massive days. Buy them as a quiver of one, for all the climbing you might want to do, or for your big wall plans. Either way, you won't be disappointed.

A little Red Rocking in the TC Pro

Value

The TC Pro is worth saving your lunch money. Concerning durability, the 4mm rubber will outlast the rand, which tends to peel, but this doesn't affect performance. The leather upper shows no real signs of wear after significant use. The fact that they can be utilized for general climbing in addition to being a very specialized shoe increases their value significantly in our book. It might be hard to justify if you don't climb that often, but maybe they will inspire you to get out more.

The TC Pro handles all but very thin cracks extremely well.

Conclusion

The TC Pro has a serious fan club but is also not without detractors; this is likely since it was talked up so much, people probably thought it would climb for them. When it didn't, folks got grumpy. The bottom line is: if you're looking for one great shoe to do it all, and perhaps have big wall ambitions, you could do worse. At the price, you probably couldn't afford another pair of shoes anyway.

Where to Buy?

Thinking about buying some gear we've reviewed? Help OutdoorGearLab out if you do. Just click on any of the above seller links and if you make any purchase, the seller will contribute a portion of the sale to help support this site. It won't cost you anything extra, and it's a simple way to help us fund our gear reviews. Thanks!

*Most retailers free shipping offers apply only to lower 48 US states using ground/economy shipping. See retailer's website for details.

OutdoorGearLab Member Reviews

Most recent review: August 17, 2017

Summary of All Ratings

OutdoorGearLab Editors' Rating:

1

2

3

4

5

(4.0)

Average Customer Rating:

(0.0)

Rating Distribution

1 Total Ratings

5 star:

(0)

4 star:

(1)

3 star:

(0)

2 star:

(0)

1 star:

(0)

Have you used this product?Don't hold back. Share your viewpoint by posting a review with your thoughts...

Follow Us

Did you know?We buy all the products we review at OutdoorGearLab ourselves, at retail just like you, to help ensure complete objectivity and independence in our ratings. We won't accept any free evaluation units from manufacturers. Read more about our process to create the world's most carefully tested and objective outdoor gear reviews on our About page.